Up in Arms: against the militarisation of everyday life

This week Vron Ware's new book, Military Migrants (Palgrave Macmillan) is published, documenting the untold story of the British Army's recruitment of Commonwealth citizens from 1998 to the present. Why did this happen and what do military recruitment policies have to do with nationhood, politics and culture? To further explore the militarisation of every day life in its shifting global context, we are proud to launch Vron Ware’s new column, Up in Arms

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What is the impact of war on the home front? Up in Arms will address the idea that
Britain has been undergoing some complex processes of militarisation as a
consequence of ‘Blair’s wars’.

The figure of the soldier occupies a volatile space at
the heart of British domestic and foreign politics. After a decade of divisive
and disastrous deployments, the changing fortunes of the armed forces at home
can no longer cloak the hidden cost of sending the country to war and keeping
it there.

This column will explore what this might mean for Britons
in today’s securitised climate. It will also raise more general questions about the
future of national armed forces everywhere as bastions of public service and
national identity.

The
British soldier just this week

October has already seen evidence of how fast perceptions
of military prestige can shift within civil society. Just as five marines were
charged with the murder of an insurgent in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence
faced further allegations by a whistleblower that the inquiry set up to examine
claims
of abuse of Iraqi citizens by British servicemen (IHAT) was deeply flawed.
According to human rights lawyer Louise Christian, ‘nearly
half of those working for it are reported to have come from the private
security firm G4S’.

During the same week, media investigations revealed the
extent of complicity between the public defence sector and the private arms
trade. A Sunday Times sting caught
former military chiefs on film boasting of their lobbying skills. As a result,
the head of the country’s leading ex-servicemen’s organisation resigned from
his position. This was followed by a Guardian
report on the ‘revolving door’ linking former military personnel, defence
officials and arms companies eager to secure their services.

And all these revelations have threatened
to drown out the noises from within the cabinet calling for the troops to be
brought back from Afghanistan, immediately, on financial grounds alone. By
March 2012, the war had cost taxpayers £17.3 billion on top of the core defence
budget. Chancellor George Osborne was said to have questioned the purpose of delaying the final exit for another two
years, while defence secretary Phillip Hammond had hinted earlier that the
negotiations for withdrawal were ‘flexible’ and ‘evolving’.

But the deadly practice of warcraft
is changing fast. With increasing reliance on armed drones, special operation
forces and private security firms, it becomes crucial to monitor the twists and
turns of military matters on the home front.

National
recognition

Within the last five years we have rarely heard any
critical discussion of soldiering in the UK. Whether a job in the British Army
is regarded as a service or a profession, it has been routinely mystified by
the language of heroes and sacrifice, even as the organisation is targeted for
restructuring along with the rest of the public sector.

One index of the unique position of soldiers as workers
is the prohibition on forming trade unions or even on joining an
anti-government protest. This was underlined when serving members of the Royal
Regiment of Fusiliers announced
that, despite the risk of court martial, they would join retired colleagues on
a march to the House of Commons during a debate on defence cuts. In the event,
the protest only made news after Andrew Robothan, an armed forces minister,
demanded that the veterans be removed from the public gallery for ‘making too
much noise’. The irony was not lost on the ex-servicemen who were threatened
with ejection from the parliamentary debate for simply applauding those who spoke on behalf of their
doomed regiment.

A striking image that encapsulates the current status of
the British soldier in public is that of the khaki-clad security staff at the
2012 London Olympics, frisking members of the public as they entered the
enclosure. In a piece
in oD at the time I suggested that,’ The Games
provide a tailor-made experiment to test the public’s reactions to army
uniforms seen up close and, above all, worn by soldiers primed to engage with
fellow citizens as opposed to foreign combatants’.

The high visibility of military personnel only makes sense as a complex reconfiguring of the place of defence institutions in Britain's public life. Rather than as a substantially new departure, the use of soldiers as security guards deserves to be seen as a culmination of a fractious process which must be analysed as part of the continuing aftermath of the Iraq War.

One strand of this concerns the long-running legal
battles over the responsibility of the Ministry of Defence towards the troops
themselves. Just this month, for example, the court of appeal decided to allow military
personnel or their relatives to pursue claims that the government and armed
services chiefs had a duty of care to troops during military operations. This
particular battle had been raging since 2003 when soldiers began writing home
from the front line about the inadequacy of basic equipment, let alone military
hardware.

Numerous measures were set in place to limit the damaging
scenario of a government failing to discharge its responsibility towards its
armed forces. Many of these interventions were aimed at a war-weary public that
seemed undecided whether to cast the soldier as a victim of hateful foreign
policy or a perpetrator.

In March 2008, for instance, it emerged that servicemen
at RAF Wittering had been ordered NOT to wear uniform in the nearby town after
it was reported that some had been ‘taunted
by people who opposed UK involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq’. Although this
had allegedly happened some months earlier, the incident was used to promote
Gordon Brown’s inquiry into ‘the national recognition of our armed forces.’ One
outcome
of this review was a push for greater military outreach into schools in an
effort to engage with young people. Another was the designation of Armed Forces
Day, sold to the public as an annual opportunity for the nation to say ‘thank
you’.

Four years on, asked about the lasting impact of the
Olympics on the military, Commander of Land Forces Nick Parker said that, for
him, the contact with the public had
been ‘invigorating’. He confirmed the fact that the exercise had been
successful in ‘strengthening the bond’ between the armed forces and the British
public, demonstrating not just that they had a role to play at home but also
that the military offered attractive career opportunities.

‘The most significant act
of recognition many of us have had is to be openly thanked in the street - not
very British perhaps, and we may have looked embarrassed. But the public's
unreserved support for the armed forces will have a lasting impact on us.’

In this column, however,
the notion of ‘unreserved support’ will be placed under close examination,
since this is where we can locate most clearly the ongoing momentum of militarization.
Towards the end of the cold war,
writer Michael Geyer memorably defined
the concept as ‘the contradictory and tense social process in which civil
society organizes itself for the production of violence’.

The figure of the soldier
stands on the faultline between several contradictory but deeply-held social
and cultural beliefs today. On the
one hand, sympathy for servicemen and women can lead to greater public anger
when they are sent off to die for dubious causes. On the other, the public are
asked to obediently support the armed forces, whatever they are asked to do. Up
in Arms will explore this faultline.

Muscular monarchism

Because of Britain’s
history as an aggressive imperial power, its military institutions play a
critical role in making and reproducing official versions of Britishness. The
organisations of serving and former servicemen and women are central to annual
rituals of remembrance that bring the idea of a nation alive, as we shall be
reminded on Armistice Day in a fortnight’s time. The connections between
church, state, monarchy and military are pivotal in the UK.

Consider the importance of the two princes in supplying a
new generation of modern, militarised, masculine and ‘muscular’ monarchism.
Both the Royal Wedding and Prince Harry’s exploits have done wonders for the
image of the Crown overseas as well as re-defining the role of the monarch as a
military figurehead at home.

Against this alignment of such staunch political forces,
when military workers are re-branded as heroes for doing a job for which they
volunteered, the space of vocal opposition to military operations inevitably shrinks
as a result. The repercussions for
minorities or migrants living in the UK have been ominous.

So, as the success of the military’s involvement in the
Olympics security operation was being celebrated, the Sun newspaper - which has played a prominent role in shaping the
discourse of Our Boys – set itself the task of linking evident instances of
hostility to soldiers to the question of immigration. Tory
backbencher Julian Brazier was reported as saying: ‘What has only started to
come out recently was a whole string of acts of violence by people living round
the area against service personnel. We are now starting to collect some groups
who don’t feel British.’ The Sun
article was listed as part of the daily MoD media blog.

However, one incident in particular - a symptom of the
new dimension of online censorship - best illustrates the reach of the surveillance state into
social media networks to criminalise sentiments of this kind, regarded as
unacceptable.

In March this year, Azhar
Ahmed, a 19yr old from West Yorkshire, was arrested on a ‘racially aggravated
public order charge’ after posting a comment on Facebook about the deaths of 6
British soldiers in Afghanistan. According to media reports he was charged
after the mother of one of the soldiers called the police on seeing what he had
written. The bizarre charge, which implied that soldiers constitute a racial
group, was later amended to being grossly offensive under the Communications
Act 2003. Ahmed was found guilty and sentenced to 240 hours community service
as well as a fine. In sentencing Ahmed, the District Judge, Jane Goodwin,
claimed she was not stopping legitimate political opinions being strongly
voiced. ‘The test is whether what something which has been written or said is
beyond the pale of what's tolerable in our society’.

It is important to remember that anti-war protestors have
sometimes taken a stand in support of soldiers, notably in a provocative act
that earlier revealed the extent of new security laws in 21st
century Britain. In October 2005, activist Maya Evans was arrested at the
London Cenotaph as she attempted to read out the names of British soldiers who
had died in Iraq. Along with Milan Rai, who was reading names of killed Iraqi
civilians, she was the first to be convicted under
the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 for taking part in an unauthorised demonstration
within one km of Parliament
Square. They each received a conditional discharge
and a fine.

But when the parents and partners of those who are killed
or maimed question the value of the war, they frame the politicians who are
ultimately responsible in a different light. Military families cannot be
accused of not being patriotic. The success of the Military Wives Choir in
November 2011 showed how easily this normally invisible section of the ‘service
community’ was co-opted into an emotive support group for ‘Our Boys’ in
Helmand.

Naming
the dead

On October 7, 2012 a small group of people stood in
Trafalgar Square to mark the eleventh anniversary of Britain’s war in
Afghanistan. This was a very different marking of the anniversary from previous
occasions. Having been notably absent from anti-war platforms for a while –
with the exception of conscientious objector Joe Glenton - the figure of the
British soldier had evidently re-emerged as a symbol worth fighting for.

Placards were on hand calling for ‘Troops Home’ with the distinctive
blood spot in the word ‘home’, reminiscent of graphic artist David Gentleman’s
iconic anti-war posters over the decade. The simple slogan, subtly different
from the ‘Troops Out’ message of last year’s anniversary protest, reflected the
demands of Military Families Against the War. After the reading they delivered
a letter to Downing Street, calling on the David Cameron to ‘bring the troops
home by Christmas’.

The speeches
from campaigners, politicians and members of military families were brief,
punctuated by reading out the names of some of the Afghan civilians and British
soldiers who had been killed during the course of the decade.

Some read moving poems, including Hamja Ahsan, brother of
Talha Ahsan who had been extradited to the US only two days earlier after being
held in detention without trial since 2006. Seasoned speakers like MPs Jeremy
Corbin and Paul Flynn aimed their scorn at fellow politicians for their failure
to come clean and withdraw the troops immediately rather than wait until a
nominal date in 2014.

The crowd was reminded that Flynn had recently been
banished from Parliament for his stance against the war. Specifically he had
accused Philip Hammond, the defence minister, of using
British soldiers as human shields for ministers' reputations by sending them to
die in vain.

As well as the 400 or so servicemen and women who had
died out there, he said, there were at least two thousand soldiers who
returned, broken in body and spirit. ‘The Canadians and Dutch had debates and
brought their troops home, but in this country we can’t even get a debate.’

As each speaker read from a list of names of the dead
with details of their ages, home towns and the circumstances of death, words
like Khost, Merseyside, Kabul and Keighley alternated with each other in
strange juxtaposition. The effect was to place each untimely death on a level
footing with the rest, regardless of status as occupier or inhabitant, military
or civilian.

When Caroline Munday spoke about her soldier-son who had
been killed in Afghanistan, age 21, four years earlier almost to the day, the
full force of each loss was more evident. ‘I am speaking as a mum’, she said.
‘And all those mums in Afghanistan, wherever, I know how it feels and I don’t
want anyone else to have to feel like that.’

Joan Humphreys, a long-time, vocal, member of MFAW, began
by reading the names of the dead, explaining how and where each death took
place. When she finished she told us, ‘Now you never hear about that sort of
thing.’ She then spoke of her own grandson, Kevin Elliott, who had been killed
in August 2009 while he was serving with the Black Watch. She said, ‘I didn’t
like him being in the army, and I hated what he had to do, but he chose it.’

Diversity
and representation

Humphreys’ loyalty to her grandson, despite her
opposition to the wars, accentuated the fact that thousands of young women and
men are drawn to military service for a host of reasons. For all armed forces operating on a voluntary basis,
the interface between military employers and civil society is crucial in terms
of sustaining a flow of fit, trainable recruits.

Although the British
military has been the subject of several documentary and reality-style tv
programmes within the last three years, there are few opportunities for public
scrutiny of the conditions of working in and for the armed forces. Considering
the fact that they play such a pivotal role in representing the nation, it is
surprising there is only sporadic interest in the degree of diversity among the
officer class or rank and file in terms of ethnic and faith-based background as
well as gender.

In my new book, Military Migrants, I have tried to
document the transformation of the British Army by modern employment and human
rights legislation. Although the army has reached the required targets for
ethnic minorities, at least two thirds of these are not UK citizens while the
level of UK-born recruits has failed to rise significantly. The position of
these postcolonial soldiers as both heroes and unwanted outsiders – one more of
the themes I will be exploring in Up in
Arms - brings the contradictions of militarization roundly into view.

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